This is a lost person desperatly trying to be someone. I don't believe this could be call poetry? It reads like a series of pages from a note book of random thoughts, conversations and dreams. It was an interesting if repedative read. Yanyi is looking to be part of a family and group a tribe. This is solely a female community. They seem to be selecting other peoples traits and gluing the on themselves trying to constantly remake themsevles in order to fit in? They need other people permission to exist? However, having said that I can see that I too went through my teenage years trying to fit in, to be like by the people I admired. One day alone on a hilltop it came to me. I am me! Being singular and alone I am unique. I can share me with other people. I would say to Yanyi, you are beautiful and unique celebrate that. YOU ARE, SO BE !

"There are places I can't go, like outside my body."

Self-knowledge, the power of friendship and of the arts, self-awareness, queer experience all communicated through prose poetry; Yanyi's vulnerability, sincerity and emotional reactivity to her life as an immigrant Chinese American are palpable throughout the collection.

"What I also mean to say is that I recognize the focus. The impulse to know someone else before you reveal yourself. The impulse to know someone else because you have never been asked to reveal yourself. The impulse to know someone else because otherwise, you do not know yourself. The impulse to know someone else because you are self-conscious of your whole self, the one that fills up too many rooms, so much space. The impulse to hide how much space you need. The impulse to hide what you need."